Training in the middle of nowhere

My travel for work goes in spurts – sometimes there are dry spells, and sometimes it gets…umm…undry. I’m currently in the midst of a rather busy work travel set. While sometimes my travels take me to interesting places at home and abroad – there are many, many times where I’m going to less exciting places.

This week would be one of those places. A place without any cell phone coverage for 30 miles.

The town (a ‘town’ implies some sort of township, this doesn’t really have one) I’m working in has no hotel – so I have to stay some 30 miles away. And while my daily schedule ranges from 12+ hours a day of work, I am finding bit and pieces of time in between during the evening to get in my workouts.

The good news is that the middle of nowhere turns out to be a really good place to get in your training. This place happens to have perfect slowly rolling country roads with huge wide shoulders. And, on top of that – there’s swimmable water. Lots of it. It’s like a million elephants came along and peed all over the countryside – tons of water (you have seen elephants pee at the circus, right?!?). And, plenty of good places to run around.

So yesterday (Tuesday) I had a bit of a brick to knock out. I found a nearby state park that’s a few miles in size…but on a weekday in the middle of nowhere, I was the only one there. All by my lonesome. So I went ahead and unpacked the car and my bike right there in the parking lot:

From there I headed out on the road for a bit for a 10 or so mile pushing hard bike prior to my harder interval run.

I ended up wandering around a bit and then eventually over a nice bridge. It was during this bridge venture that I determined where I’d be able to later swim.

After the ride I stashed my bike in the rental car and headed out for a run. It was a set of roughly 1-mile repeats in the lovely 98*F hot and humid heat. I ended up making a nice little circle out of the state park, enabling me to throw a water bottle by the side of the deserted road to drink from each loop. I didn’t realize until the end, these little posts along the road side:

Afterwards though it was time to add more water:

From there I’d go ‘outta town’ to find something edible. At times I actually have to cross state lines to get any form of food not consisting of triple-deep-fried-who-knows-what.

Earlier this evening (Wednesday) I had a swim scheduled. It turns out however there’s not a single lap pool in this entire county, or the state next door’s county. But there are plenty of lakes!

So, I went back to ‘my park’ (where it was again empty) and got my swim stuff all on. I added both the Garmin FR310XT and Timex Global Trainer for fun, to see where I went…and then hopped into the water.

At which point…I swam.

I ended up doing a big old wonky triangle of sorts. The water was crazy-hot. Like bathtub-hot-tub hot. I think peeing in the water made it colder, not warmer. Weird.

Anyway…about 2 or so miles later, I wrapped up my swim and went back down my cove to the dock, where I got out…and called it a day!

Oh, I will be doing this in a few weeks when I’m up in Washington for a dog event in the boonies outside Auburn. I have to find some safe routes for long rides up there. Traveling always makes training a little more interesting – good job getting your workouts done!

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5 Easy Steps To The Site

You probably stumbled upon here looking for a review of a sports gadget. If you’re trying to decide which unit to buy – check out my in-depth reviews section. Some reviews are over 60 pages long when printed out, with hundreds of photos! I aim to leave no stone unturned.

It turns our I’ve written a fair bit of stuff over the past few years – and after it disappears from my front page, a lot of it never really sees the light of day again without Google’ing skillz. Or a photographic memory…which I don’t have. I’ve taken a look back and found stuff that…continues to find a trickle of readers via web searches or forum links.

I travel a fair bit, both for work and for fun. Here’s a bunch of random trip reports and daily trip-logs that I’ve put together and posted. I’ve sorted it all by world geography, in an attempt to make it easy to figure out where I’ve been.